Amina's Voice

“I wait for Soojin to answer, expecting her to say something to send Emily scurrying. Even though the cat gets my tongue when either Emily or Julie come prowling, Soojin never has any problem telling them exactly what she thinks. But Soojin just says, ‘I’m thinking of new names for myself.’”

In this quote, Emily (Amina and Soojin’s erstwhile bully) has joined Amina and Soojin in conversation. This passage crisply delineates the differences between Amina and Soojin. Firstly, Soojin has a more openly fiery and assertive personality than Amina, as evidenced by her lack of “any problem telling [people] exactly what she thinks.” Secondly, Soojin is warming to Emily, whom Amina does not initially like or trust. This sudden change in the social order will prove to be a major animating plot element of the novel.

“Ever since before Soojin moved to Greendale from New York in third grade, Emily has worked extremely hard to be Julie’s best friend. Mama would say Emily was Julie’s chamchee, which means ‘spoon’ in Urdu. That doesn’t make a lot of sense, except that it also means ‘suck-up’. And Emily has always sucked up to Julie, even if that means laughing really hard at her dumb jokes or chiming in when she puts everyone else down. And by everyone else, I mean mostly Soojin and me.”

This passage implicitly depicts the racially-motivated bullying that both Soojin and Amina encounter in their majority white school. Their ability to speak languages other than English and their racial and cultural outsider status within the school make them a target for bullying. Through this depiction, Khan demonstrates the intimate and everyday effects of racism and bigotry on the lives of children. She communicates that the youngest and therefore most vulnerable members of a society which fails to eradicate bigotry and racism will inevitably suffer from the effects of that racism and bigotry. 

“‘Don’t you like being Soojin?’ I ask my best friend in a low voice, leaning across the table to make it harder for Emily to hear. ‘You’ve been Soojin your whole life. Aren’t you used to it?’ I want to add that we had always been the only kids in elementary school with names that everyone stumbled over. That is, until Olayinka came along in fifth grade. It’s always been one of our ‘things.’”

In this passage, Soojin has just informed Amina that she will be changing her name to an English one as a part of her naturalization as an American citizen. Amina rejects this idea, as she sees Soojin’s name as an integral and valuable part of her identity. Amina also senses that the status that she shares with Soojin as a result of their immigrant and non-white backgrounds is a key element of their connection, intimacy, and friendship. Through this depiction, Khan communicates that the forging of bonds of mutual care, compassion, and solidarity are a natural consequence in children who are targeted by racially motivated bullying. Khan also asserts the resilience of these characters, and of all first-generation children by extension. She asserts that it is not merely victimhood or pain that result from racial ostracization: Beautiful and supportive friendships can also grow and flourish within that context.

“Mama told me once that she picked my name thinking it would be easiest of all the ones on her list for people in America to pronounce. But she was wrong. The neighbor with the creepy cat still calls me Amelia after living next door for five years. And my last name? Forget about it. I could barely pronounce Khokar myself until I was at least eight. And since I don’t want to embarrass anyone by correcting them more than once, I just let them say my name any way they want.”

This passage delineates the measures that Amina and her mother take to respond to the way that American society “others” Pakistani immigrants. Mrs. Khokar’s intentional decision to name her daughter something that Americans can more easily pronounce reflects her awareness that the society into which her daughter will emerge is not one that caters to her. In fact, both Mrs. Khokar and Amina know that they will be the ones expected to cater to American society—even within something so intimate as a name. 

“My older brother was a star student in elementary school. But once he got to middle school, Mustafa’s grades went downhill. Since he started high school this year, dinner often becomes lectures about how Mustafa needs to ‘get serious.’ And a few nights ago, when they thought I was in bed, I heard my parents talking about him getting ‘out of control like those American boys.’ ‘I am American,” Mustafa likes to remind them, whenever they say something like that to him. Sometimes he even mutters, ‘If you didn’t want American children, you shouldn’t have moved to this country,’ but usually only loud enough for me to hear.”

This quote reveals several key elements of Mustafa’s character. In a prototypically American teen manner, he has grown out of his studious and virtuous identity as a child. He has also come to embrace more American interests and values. Instead of continuing to devote himself to his studies, as a Pakistani teen would be expected or perhaps even forced to do, Mustafa relaxes his academic life and begins acting sullenly toward his parents. Mustafa, therefore, is and is not a typical American teenager: while the rebellion is standard, the mandates of Pakistani virtues for children are unique to his first-generation experience.

“I want my brother to see that my kids are just as disciplined as his and that I made the right decision to settle here. I don’t think he’s ever forgiven me for not returning to Pakistan.” 

Mr. Khokar speaks these lines in anticipation of his brother’s visit. Through them, he concisely articulates the reason that he cares so much what his brother thinks: He does not want to be viewed as foolish or inferior for his choice to settle his family in America. Through these lines, Khan depicts the struggle of immigrant parents in America, who are torn between the value systems of two different countries and cultures.

“Doesn’t Soojin remember all the crappy things that Emily has done for the past few years? Like the time she pinched her nose and squealed while Julie said something smelled like it had died when Soojin brought kimchee in her lunch. Or when they both scoffed at us and said, ‘Speak English, you’re in America,’ while we were teaching each other phrases in Urdu and Korean. Or, worst of all, when she and Julie spread a rumor at school that Soojin’s parents served dog meat at their downtown Milwaukee restaurant, Park Avenue Deli. Luke would bark under his breath every time he passed Soojin for months.”

In this excerpt, Amina is indignant that Soojin is so easily accepting Emily as a new friend after the racially-motivated bullying that Emily has perpetrated against both Soojin and Amina. The colloquial mandate to speak English is based in a xenophobic rejection of other languages, and implicitly asserts the false supremacy of the English language; and the idea that all Asians eat dogmeat is a derogatory stereotype. Historically, both Amina and Soojin have returned the unkindness and racism that Emily has demonstrated toward herself and Soojin with cold rejection. But now, seemingly inexplicably, Soojin has warmed to Emily. The reasons for this newfound friendship are not fully given to us by Khan, but through Amina’s eventual acceptance of Emily as a friend, Khan communicates that redemption is possible—and that unkindness should not always be met with more unkindness, lest an opportunity for a fruitful and compassionate friendship be lost.

“Dahlia always wears the hijab, and not just at the Islamic Center. She even sports it at the middle school she goes to. I can’t imagine what it would be like to walk through Greendale Middle School and be the only person with a scarf on, but Dahlia makes it seem as natural as wearing a headband, no matter where she is.”

This passage demonstrates the tensions that Amina feels regarding wearing her faith on her sleeve—or in this case, around her head in the form of a hijab. This quote reflects her justifiable and legitimate fear of being labeled an outsider and othered by the children around her, which would run counter to the very natural desire for acceptance and love. Still, she greatly admires and respects Dahlia for the courage that she possesses to openly announce her faith and identity wherever she goes and sees her hijabs as beautiful. This captures one aspect of Amina’s complex experience navigating her identity and faith in America.

“In the hush of the prayer hall, with its crystal chandelier, gold trim, and big plaques with Arabic calligraphy decorating the walls, a familiar calm washes over me. A woman in front of us kneels in prayer, touching her head to the ground while her baby tugs on her shirt. An older lady mouths prayers with a string of beads in her hand. And I spot Mama in the corner reading the Quran quietly with Salma Auntie and their other friends.” 

In this quote, Amina depicts the Muslim center with great warmth, respect, love, and reverence. It is clearly a treasured, sacred, and intimate space for herself, her family, and her community. Khan, by making sure that the reader knows and sees the special and significant place that the Center holds in Amina’s heart, elevates the emotional stakes for the attack that the Center ultimately sustains. By depicting the Center as a unique, singular, and robust community outpost, Khan takes the depiction of a hate crime attack on a Muslim center beyond the headlines. She depicts the human aspect and underscores the gravity and weight of such attacks on vibrant and valued community spaces designed to promote safety, cultural and religious bonds, and communion with a higher power. 

“‘There’s nothing wrong with the way we live.’ Mama stirs the food in the pot hard, and her spoon hits the sides. ‘We work hard and have raised good, decent children.’ ‘I know, I know. But Bhai Jaan is so...traditional. He worried about us turning away from Islam. And you know everything to him is black and white.’ Baba speaks in a hush, as if his brother might overhear him from thousands of miles away.”

This passage depicts a quietly contentious discussion between Mr. and Mrs. Khokar. Mr. Khokar has just asserted that he wishes to impress his brother, and to give him no reason to look down upon the family’s American life. Mrs. Khokar’s response betrays her exasperation with her husband’s desire to pacify his brother’s orthodox values. She does not view the life of her family as something to be ashamed of at all, as she is secure in the knowledge that she and her husband are doing their best, and that their status as Americans does not make their Muslim faith any less valid. Mrs. Khokar will act upon this belief at several points during the narrative, when she defends Amina against the harm and stress that Thaya Jaan’s orthodox and decontextualized mandates cause to Amina. This passage therefore depicts Mrs. Khokar as a tireless champion for her children, as Mr. Khokar allows himself to become more beholden to outside standards than she.

“‘What if Immigration is giving him a hard time? Or maybe they are going through his bags in Customs?’ Baba asks.”

In this passage, Mr. Khokar frets about the difficulties that his brother may encounter while entering America. The lines are an implicit reference to the travel bans instituted by President Trump, which were widely discussed as policies based in xenophobia and Islamophobia. Mr. Khokar sees the harm of these policies acutely, as he understands that his brother may likely be targeted for harassment or abuse at the worst, and inconvenience at best, due to his Muslim and “foreign” appearance. Through this passage, Khan demonstrates the intimate human impact of Islamophobic legislation.

“I haven’t seen my cousins in six years and hardly remember them apart from a few memories of playing dolls with the girls and stealing mangos and dried dates from the kitchen when the cook wasn’t looking. My cousins are people I don’t really think of until I get an occasional photo or formal letters like this. I wish I knew them better.”

In this passage, Amina expresses sadness and longing as a result of being separated from her cousins. Khan therefore uses this passage to parse another aspect of first-generation life: the separation from extended family in the home country. By exploring this aspect of Amina’s life, Khan rounds out her portrayal of the first-generation child, attending to it in order to make it nuanced and dimensional.

“‘They understand it, but we speak both English and Urdu to them, and the kids respond to us in English,’ he says. Baba seems ashamed of us. I suddenly wish Urdu didn’t jumble in my head and come out all wrong. It’s just as bad when I try to read Arabic.”

In this excerpt, Amina feels the weight of her father’s struggle with assimilation to America and loyalty to Pakistan. She is unfairly cast as a pawn in her father’s struggle, as Mr. Khokar defensively explains Amina’s difficulty with the Urdu language because it feels like an attack on his own parenting skills and “un-Pakistani” values. In this setup, Amina is essentially used as a means to project and protect her father’s identity, which is why she feels that her father is ashamed of her when she does not measure up to Thaya Jaan’s expectations. 

“My eyes welled up, and I didn’t know what to say. So I sat in silence against the wall, swallowed up in my shame, waiting to go home. Since that day, I’ve always felt a bit gorilla-like around Justin and make it a habit to avoid him. Thankfully he has never mentioned my hair or really talked to me again, but I have never forgotten it.”

In this passage, Amina details the effects of Justin’s comment that she had grass growing on her legs. Justin’s comment was a reaction to the thick hair that grows on Amina’s legs—which is a distinctively non-white characteristic. He is othering her on racial grounds, although it is very possible that neither he nor Amina understands the bigoted basis for his comment. This incident depicts the intimate ways that racism and bigotry affect both the perpetrator of racially motivated bullying and its targets. It shows the ways that insidious white supremacist beauty standards have immediate, everyday effects on children of color’s interpersonal relationships and self-esteem.

“I finish with [Thaya Jaan] as quickly as possible and then go to my room and sing my heart out. After struggling with the Arabic, it helps me calm down to sing, even if it’s kind of strange to go from Quran to Motown. I even made a video of myself singing a cover one time. But I deleted it before anyone, especially Rabiya, got ahold of it.”

This passage concisely depicts the vibrant hybridity that characterizes Amina’s life, identity, and experience. After fully immersing herself in Arabic studies, she enjoys American Motown, which helps her to feel grounded, and strong. This rapid switching between cultural registers and contexts is depicted as a unique and joyous characteristic. Khan communicates that the first-generation experience is not one that is monolithically defined by trauma and anguish: it has its beautiful and vibrant aspects as well.

“I wanted to say, ‘But I do want to sing. More than anything.’ But I didn’t. Instead, I agreed to do it, took the sheet music, and shoved it into my bag. As much as I love playing piano, it stinks to be stuck in the background while other people shine onstage, a soundtrack no one pays attention to, like the music piped into The Voice. My only consolation is that at least I don’t get nervous playing the piano in front of an audience. I’ve done plenty of recitals over the years…”

In this passage, Amina reflects on a conversation that she had with her music teacher. At this point in the narrative, she is still hiding her singing voice from the world due to her stage fright and lack of confidence in herself. But the passage reveals the true feelings of Amina’s heart that lay beneath her steadfast refusal to share her singing voice with the world: She does want to share it. This passage sets up the ending of the novel and Amina’s decision to ultimately step into the spotlight and deliver a solo performance. It helps us to see how far Amina has come in terms of embracing herself and developing the strength and confidence to show her gift to the world. 

“I go upstairs and dig the yellow shirt out of my dresser, switching on my iPod out of habit. As the music fills the room, my spirits start to lift...until Thaya Jaan’s words come back to me. Music is forbidden. I quickly turn it off again and sit on my bed, staring at the music books and sheets lying scattered on the floor. I can’t shake the uneasy feeling that has settled on me like dust for days—have I been doing something wrong, or un-Islamic, by spending so much of my time singing and playing piano?”

This excerpt depicts the harmful emotional and psychological effects of Thaya Jaan’s dogmatic orthodoxy, which, at this point in the narrative, does not take the complexities of Amina’s Pakistani-American life, experience, and identity into respectful account. Thaya Jaan’s narrow-minded belief that Amina’s gift of musicality brings her further away from God has unmoored Amina and caused her to think that a central part of her identity constitutes an insult to God. Through these details, Khan parses the harm of religious orthodox, and argues for a more holistic approach to the practice of Islam which makes room for a diversity of experience and context.

“I kind of understand, but it’s still strange to have witnessed Baba pretending to agree with his brother. It must have been part of the wanting-everyone-to-be-perfect-and-never-disagreeing stuff. ‘There is some music that I do think is inappropriate—like music with bad language—but that’s different,’ he continued. ‘Your music is wonderful.’”

Here, at Mrs. Khokar’s prodding, Mr. Khokar admits his true feelings about Amina’s musical talents. He has previously agreed, orally at least, with his brother’s assertion that Amina is engaging in an activity prohibited by Islam. But that verbal agreement was only stated because Mr. Khokar is so invested in gaining the praise and approval of his brother, and not because it was actually what he believed. Here, his true feelings are revealed. This passage therefore depicts Mr. Khokar as a character caught between two value systems. Initially, he does make the decision to betray his daughter to signal orthodoxy and religious virtue, but the pain that he sees his daughter is suffering, as well as the confident assertions of his wife help him to admit his mistake.

“‘You have to talk to him,’ Mama says with a frown. ‘I respect Bhai Jaan for his beliefs, but this is too much. We have a right to teach our children our values. What if Amina had never said anything to us and thought she was doing something wrong for loving music?’”

Mrs. Khokar speaks these lines. In them, she reveals herself as a tireless champion for Amina’s well-being. Mrs. Khokar seems to have a more evolved and mature perspective on the hybrid Pakistani-American life of her family. She understands that her children will not be identical to Pakistani children—they couldn’t possibly be as children growing up in America. And more important than religious orthodoxy is the emotional and psychological well-being of her child.

“Without saying a word, [Baba] pulls Mustafa and me into a tight embrace for what seems like a long time before letting us go. When he speaks, his voice is full of sadness. ‘It’s devastating. We poured so many years of our lives into building this place. I painted those walls for the first time with my own hands, and now it’s been…’ his voice cracks.” 

This passage depicts the grave emotional effect that the attack on the Islamic Center exacts on Mr. Khokar and asserts the human impact of Islamophobic hate crimes. By depicting Mr. Khokar’s raw pain and emotion in the wake of the attack, Khan puts a human face on the headlines. She asserts that the attacks that American mosques have sustained as a result of a growing tide of Islamophobia inaugurated by the Trump presidency are not abstract news stories, but destructive acts that have real and deep impacts upon human lives. 

“Something in my chest breaks into pieces as I survey the room. Worst of all are the walls, once creamy white, now covered with black spray paint. My eyes scan the hateful phrases written in thick crooked lines—sloppy writing that screams Go Home, Terrorists, Towelheads, and bad words so terrible that I squeeze my eyelids shut tight. The writing cuts deep, as the fear of whoever could do something like this grips me. I reach for Mustafa, feeling dizzy, and realize that I’m holding my breath.”

This passage reveals the deep and raw pain that Amina feels when she sees the hate-filled graffiti that has defaced her beloved Islamic Center. Keeping her audience of children in mind, Khan does omit the more graphic slurs, while still alluding to them. She also gives Amina as a character a moment to fully take in the hatred and destruction of the attack. This is an important emotional and authorial choice, as it asserts that children cannot be shielded from the painful and destructive consequences of such hate-filled attacks. By confronting and depicting the spectre of hate crimes in this way, Khan asks the reader to fully and truly examine the concrete ways that prejudice and bigotry irrevocably impact children. 

“I don’t want to think about who [the attackers] were, and why they were smashing things or spraying the walls. Instead I just pray for things to go back to the way they were before, back to before this horrible night, back to before I wished my way out of the competition, back to before I heard Thaya Jaan say what he did about music, and back to before I messed everything up with Soojin and Emily. The heaviness that has settled around my heart is getting to the point where it is slowly being crushed. I’m afraid I will never feel normal again.”

In this climactic passage, the conflict that Khan has carefully plotted up to this point in the narrative comes to a head. Amina is not on speaking terms with her best friend, and her place of worship has been seriously attacked, damaged, and vandalized. This leaves Amina feeling utterly unmoored, hurt, and powerless.

“After the first few measures, I forget everything for a moment and feel whole again, in spite of what happened earlier in the day. I play as if no one is listening, basking in the richness of the sound. Finally, as I hit the last note, I remember that I’m not alone and turn around. Baby Sumaiya squeals and bangs her toy on the coffee table, drooling with a big toothless grin. But everyone else has tears in their eyes—even Thaya Jaan.”

In this passage, Mr. Khokar has slyly invited Amina to play piano for the community members that have gathered in the Khokar home following the attack on the Islamic Center. It is implied that Amina’s playing will help win Thaya Jaan over to the cause of understanding the value of music. And this passage makes it clear that it has worked: Thaya Jaan now sees Amina’s gift as something valuable—something that nourishes their Muslim community by giving voice to passion and emotion.